On 17th. July Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, presented her Personal ,Social, Health and Economic Education [Statutory Requirement] Bill to the House of Commons for its First Reading. The bill was jointly sponsored by Labour M.Ps Glenda Jackson, Valerie Vaz, Yasmin Quareshi, and Barbara Keeley as well as Liberal Democrat Tim Farron.
The full text of the bill is yet to be published but, in essence, it calls upon the Secretary of State for Education to provide that Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education [PSHE] be a statutory requirement for all state funded schools; for PHSE to include Sex and Relationships Education [SRE] and education on ending violence against women and girls; to provide for initial and continuing teacher education and guidance on best practice for delivering and inspecting PSHE and SRE education; and for connected purposes.
The Hull and East Riding Labour LGBT+ Network welcomes this initiative —albeit with reservations. These are:
1 Any legislation should apply to ALL schools whether state funded or not.
2. When the detailed text is published it should make it clear that SRE will be LGBT inclusive. Ms. Lucas is perfectly right to focus on the violence perpetrated in our schools against women and girls but homophobia and associated bullying should also be highlighted as a major problem that must be effectively tackled.
3. The third reservation is that parliamentary procedures mean that the chances of this bill coming law—or even being debated – is minimal. That was the fate of Geraint Davies’ Private Members Bill earlier this year to try to ban Conversion Therapy.
This is not to belittle the efforts of these backbench MPs to keep these vital issues on the political agenda, but a great deal more in the way of campaigning needs to be done as well.
Vital at the moment is the need to get a pledge on Mandatory SRE-Inclusive PSHE in ALL schools to go in to Labour#s Manifesto. All the signs are that this is being resisted by the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Tristram Hunt, who does not want PSHE mandatory. In this sense he really does seem to have been the shadow of the late lamented Michael Gove. We believe that there is widespread support for mandatory PSHE in the Labour Party in Parliament and the Country. For this reason we applaud those backbench MPs who have stood up and been counted. May there be more of them. May those members of the Shadow Cabinet who we know disagree with Hunt [read Yvette Coopers last conference speech] continue to push the case behind closed doors. But above all let the battle be fought within the Labour Party on this vital issue so that the case can be put to the country. Now is not the time to be seen to be running scared.
DETAILS OF THE BILL ARE PUBLISHED 23rd OCT 2014
